


and everything golden dies

by Valhella



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: 'since i was 6' like oh my god, Character Study, Child Soldiers, Childhood Trauma, Mentions of alcohol, Other, POV Cassian Andor, me being preachy about how the rebellion isn't squeaky clean, we need to talk about cassian...he has seen shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 03:46:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8952604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valhella/pseuds/Valhella
Summary: He is left thinking about what he had ever done to deserve this life, but he cowers at the thought of any other one.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I loved Cassian Andor: A Star Wars Story and basically wanted to do a character study because I can't remember any other rebel star wars character as broken and torn as he is and also because I enjoy making myself incredibly sad
> 
> I got all my info from the visual guide (Cassian's father died on Carida, he's from Fest, and that's about it) so you can consider some of this canon????? I just gave my own headcanons for stuff that wasn't included. please forgive me if I get something wrong; I don't know terribly much about the extended universe, and I'm drawing all my knowledge from just the films.

When he is six years old, his mother sits him down. Her dark eyes are threatening to spill with tears, but her nostrils are flared and her lips are still when they should be trembling. He would know; he was there when she returned home months earlier, covered in his father's blood. He was the one to ask whose blood it was.

 

It still shocks Cassian, how little he can remember of Fest (or how he tried to forget it) and how little he can remember of his father that he is able to remember any of what she said at all, because he tries his best to forget. Memories do no good in a war, he tells himself, right before he winces at the sting of a brandy that he doesn't like.

 

But all the brandy and whisky do nothing. In fact, it is the words of his mother that he remembers before he collapses into his cot, cold and lonely from one of the nights where he isn't fighting for his life.

 

"It is either they kill us, or we kill them."

 

She taught him duty, even before the blast. She didn't need to teach him who their enemies were. He made that decision the second she returned from Carida.

 

.

 

When he is eight, she leaves Dantooine in a starship. She fills him with kisses before she leaves, and he is left still waving at the sky even when she enters hyperspace.

 

It takes him three days before he realizes she is never coming back, when Mothma and Organa are commending her and the five others who were aboard.

 

He is surrounded by people who have lost everything, but that is no reason to feel like he is at home.

 

.

 

When he is ten, he makes his first kill. It is not something that will make it into books. He picks up a fallen blaster, still red, and aims it at a Stormtrooper poised to kill a child younger than he. Why he is in the midst of battle, he does not know. He is told the Empire will do whatever it takes to quell the rebellion and its future. He aims, he shoots; he is told he has a good eye, and that when he is of age he will be able to do so much more.

 

He does not know what parent would tell this story to send their child to sleep.

 

.

 

When he is fifteen, he is told that his expression, hard and focused, is the spitting image of her.

 

He thinks of her now as much as ever, even more than he did on that first mission a year ago on Nopsin. He is left asking only himself if she would be proud. If he had become the survivor she always wanted him to be, or perhaps something else.

 

.

 

When he is seventeen, he hates himself for what little he feels. He tries to recall a time when he would feel anything. When he would observe the stillness of an Imperial anybody and wonder if they had children at home that would feel what he did the day his mother returned from Carida.

 

Now, he breathes a sigh of relief when any enemy crumples to the floor lifeless, and it chills him to the bone.

 

.

 

When he is eighteen, he receives a medal he knows he will just leave by his bedside. They are saying he is the youngest intelligence officer or perhaps one of the youngest; Cassian wonders if he has earned it, or if all others simply died around his crowning moment.

 

He is pressured into attending a celebration afterward and hears another officer say they have all lost somebody, one way or another. He doesn't think of retaliation until he hears his mother's name. He doesn't think of sending the officer crashing into the ground until he wonders aloud if she would ever be proud of a boy whose first confirmed kill was, in his own words, before his balls dropped, but he does, and he is forced off by other officers, who are at a loss for words and regard the incident as only a drunken one. They know it is something more, because his fists are red when they escort him back to his room.

 

He thinks about what he had ever done to deserve this life, but he cowers at the thought of any other one, of how he would spend the remainder of his days if he ever lived to see that fucking emperor rot.

 

He can't remember how many times he has washed blood off his hands. He doesn't know why this time, he lets the water continue to run so he doesn't have to listen to his own sobs.

 

.

 

Eight years later, he is told of the Empire's ultimate weapon - that it can destroy a planet in minutes - and that it's chief creator's only daughter has been found and taken into rebel custody. 

 

He already knows what he must do.

 


End file.
